Newsletter: Indie Focus: Remembering Chantal Akerman, thinking of ‘Steve Jobs’ + new PTA
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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
We’re getting our Indie Focus Screening Series back in gear on Monday the 12th with a very specifically Los Angeles story in “Manson Family Vacation.” In the film, two estranged brothers, Conrad (Linas Phillips) and Nick (Jay Duplass) are reunited, but then Conrad’s growing obsession with Charles Manson takes a strange turn. Though the film has the contours of a knockabout comedy, it becomes more emotional as it goes along.
We’ll have writer-director J. Davis along with actor/executive producer Duplass and actors Phillips and Tobin Bell with us. The film is getting a primarily digital release, so there won’t be many chances to see it in a theater.
We’ll be recording the Q&A for one of our future podcasts. You can listen to the rest of our recent podcast series here.
And check here for more info on future events: events.latimes.com/indiefocus/
Chantal Akerman
It was with great sadness and a tremendous sense of responsibility that I took on the obituary for filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who died this week in Paris at age 65. Best known for her landmark 1975 film “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” Akerman was not exactly a household name, though her influence on international cinema cannot be overstated. As I wrote, “The Belgian-born Akerman was frequently likened to Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder for her restless, broad-ranging style and the piercing intelligence she brought to both the formal and thematic elements of her work.”
Chantal Akerman at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011.
Chantal Akerman at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011. (Elisabetta A. Villa / WireImage)
Akerman had been expected to attend the U.S. premiere of what is now her last film, “No Home Movie,” as part of the New York Film Festival. The festival’s director of programming, Kent Jones, wrote after her death, “She had a horror of clichés and neat formulations, and it seems to me that she was always trying to wriggle out of the straitjacket of such size-ups and classifications as feminist, structuralist, leftist or ‘essentially’ Jewish, even when they were made in her favor.”
He added, “Chantal’s films do not comfort. They jolt and they re-orient, they put you and me face to face with accumulating time, in whose shadow we live whether we know it or not. That’s the source of their terror and their great beauty — one in the same.”
There were many other tributes, full of both sadness and insight. Critic J. Hoberman, who had been a vital voice in establishing the filmmaker’s reputation, noted in the New York Times, “ ‘Jeanne Dielman’ and its successors established Ms. Akerman as one of the great film artists of her generation and among the most influential. She was also, along with Maya Deren and Leni Riefenstahl, one of a handful of women whose films and example changed the course of cinema history.”
For The New Yorker, Richard Brody recalled seeing Akerman at a Q&A in Paris in 2000 and said, “If there’s one thing that Akerman achieved in her films, it’s the elevation of private life, of what’s extraordinary about what’s seemingly ordinary, into the apt matter of art.”
At Grantland, Mark Harris recalled seeing the recent NYFF press screening of “No Home Movie,” and said, “As the best movies do, it expanded in my head; for days afterward, it kept asserting its troubling, unsettled presence.”
A number of Akerman’s films are available via the Criterion Collection on the streaming service Hulu, including “Jeanne Dielman.” For a limited time, those movies are available to view for free.
‘Steve Jobs’
Arriving on a wave of anticipation to rival the release of a new iPhone is the film “Steve Jobs.” Starring Michael Fassbender in the title role, alongside Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and others, the film is directed by Danny Boyle from a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin adapted from Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late technology entrepreneur.
In his review, Kenneth Turan said, “Compelling subject. Fast-paced, exhilarating dialogue. Focused direction that maintains an almost ruthless pace. Acting that couldn't be more assured.
Kate Winslet and Michael Fassbender in “Steve Jobs,”directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin.
Kate Winslet and Michael Fassbender in "Steve Jobs," directed by Danny Boyle and written by Aaron Sorkin. (Francois Duhamel / Universal Studios)
“It has to be ‘Steve Jobs’ … a smart, hugely entertaining film that all but bristles with crackling creative energy. What it is not is a standard biopic.”
There has been, and will continue to be, lots of coverage on this beguiling film. Rebecca Keegan spoke to Sorkin, while Glenn Whipp spoke to Fassbender.
Steve Zeitchik was at a recent news conference where Boyle cited Albert Einstein in saying, “Facts get you from A to B. Imagination gets you everywhere else.”
‘The Final Girls’
One of my unexpected favorite screenings this past spring as part of the SXSW Film Festival was the premiere of the movie “The Final Girls.” Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson and written by Joshua John Miller and M.A. Fortin, the film is an infectiously affectionate send-up/pastiche of ’80s horror flicks.
In the film, a young woman, Max (Taissa Farmiga), mourning the death of her mother (Malin Akerman), goes to a screening of a 1980s horror movie her mother had starred in. When a fire breaks out in the theater, Max and her friends escape by cutting a hole in the screen and walking through. They suddenly find themselves inside the movie, fighting off the killer at a summer camp and trying to figure out how to get back to reality.
The cast includes Thomas Middleditch, Adam DeVine, Alia Shawkat, Nina Dobrev, Alexander Ludwig, Angela Trimbur and Tory Thompson.
In his review for the L.A. Times, Michael Rechtshaffen called the film “a playful deconstruction of the slasher film that ultimately packs a surprisingly affecting punch.”
The cast of “The Final Girls” attends the film’s world premiere Friday at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas.
The cast of "The Final Girls" attends the film's world premiere Friday at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. (Michael Buckner / Getty Images for SXSW)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Junun’
It’s no secret that around these parts, we’re big fans of the filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. So the idea that he has a new film, of any kind, is something to celebrate. His new documentary, “Junun,” premiered as part of the New York Film Festival and is now available online at the website mubi.com.
Just under an hour, the film follows musician Jonny Greenwood, a member of Radiohead and composer of the scores for Anderson’s last few films, as he goes to India to work with Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur.
In a review in Variety, Nick Schager noted, “With no contextual onscreen information provided, and interview and conversational dialogue kept to a bare minimum, ‘Junun’ functions as an experiential documentary, one in which all meaning and emotion is derived from being wholly submerged in the music on display.”
Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.
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